


Scope

by BurningTea



Series: Prompts [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Set sometime after season 11, cas in the bunker, kind of hopeful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-07-14 10:37:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7167731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BurningTea/pseuds/BurningTea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean doesn't get why Castiel is spending all of his time looking through the telescope in the Bunker.  It might point the way to an important reunion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scope

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ExpatGirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExpatGirl/gifts).



> So, ExpatGirl gave me the following prompts:
> 
> They finally use that big damn telescope they have in the bunker for no apparent reason  
> and/or  
> A cupid comes to them with a case (surprise it's a date!)  
> and/or  
> Dean finds excuses for Cas to lift heavy objects. Cas is oblivious. (Cas totally notices.) 
> 
> I've only really managed the first one. Sorry. I'll try for the others in other fics.

Dean notices when Cas walks into the kitchen, pours a cup of coffee, and disappears with it. Of course he does. But it’s not like it’s that unusual, not enough to need to comment on it. Besides, Sam’s sent him five messages in the last hour, all of them detailing new snippets of gross from the case he’s on with Donna, and Dean needs to work on that. 

He does notice that Cas hasn’t reappeared by the time he’s sent what he can find back to Sam. Cas tends to hole himself up in odd corners, but he normally comes back for more coffee way sooner than it’s been, and Dean’s been keeping an eye on the guy. Trying to, anyway. Cas’ status as a master tactician smacks Dean in the face every time he goes to track his friend down. No-one finds Cas if he doesn’t want to be found.

Dean hasn’t quite worked out why Cas doesn’t always want to be found. 

Now, he makes a fresh pot of coffee before he goes searching. Cas gets grumpy even when he isn’t actively avoiding Dean, and it’s best to bring an offering. In the absence of incense or the heart of a fatted calf, Dean’s chosen regular mugs of tar-black coffee.

Cas’ empty mug sits on the library table, but it takes Dean a second to spot Cas himself. 

“Cas? What are you doing?” he asks.

From his place crouched in front of the telescope, Cas looks around, one hand resting on the device that Dean and Sam have pretty much ignored for the last few years. 

“Do you know what you’ve got here?” Cas asks, and the light in his eyes is feverish.

“A telescope?” Dean asks, because the way Cas asks makes him doubt his eyes.

If it turns out to be Gabriel in disguise or some shit, Dean’s going to lose it. 

“Yes, Dean,” Cas says, and he’s got the verbal eye-roll down, that’s for sure. “But do you know what type?”

Dean opens his mouth, closes it, and shrugs.

“Gonna go with ‘the scopey kind’,” he says after a beat, letting his lips twist into a smile that’s got him into more than one fight in bars. “And, hey, I brought you a coffee.”

“Thanks,” Cas says, but he barely flicks a glance at it. “Did you need something?”

“Just wanted to check in,” Dean says, like Cas is an airport or a hotel. “You need a hand with anything?”

“No,” Cas says. “No, I’m fine.”

Dean hesitates, but Cas is already turning back to the telescope, is already pressing an eye to the sight, his long finger curving round the metal. Whatever it is he’s looking at through feet of brick and concrete, he doesn’t seem to need Dean’s help with it. 

“Right. Well, that’s good, I guess. I’ll just be, er… yeah.”

Cas doesn’t try to stop Dean as he leaves.

*********************************

Sam clatters down the steps into the war-room, nodding a greeting to Dean.

“Donna’s made me promise I’ll drag your ass over to see her soon,” he says. “Cas too.”

“Might need to pry him off the telescope first,” Dean says, and doesn’t manage to filter out all of the bitterness. No point hoping Sam will miss it. 

From the look on Sam’s face, yeah, that would have been a pointless hope. At least he keeps the sympathetic edge to the level of plausible deniability. 

“What’s he doing with that?” Sam asks.

“Teaching it to tango,” Dean says. “Who the fuck knows? He’s Cas. Maybe it’s telling him limericks.” 

“I’m pretty sure that’s not it,” Sam says. “Have you asked him?”

Dean shrugs, and picks at the corner of a book on the war-room table. It beats looking at Sam. There are times when he wants to fool himself into believing Sam really buys all the lies Dean tells about himself, and that’s much easier when he can’t see Sam’s eyes.

“Nah. He’s kinda into whatever he’s doing. Didn’t want to disturb him.”

“Right,” Sam says. “Well, I’m going to drop my bag off in my room. You up for casserole? I got sent back with so much casserole.”

“Donna sent you back with food?” Dean asks.

“Jodi sent her about ten messages telling her to. I’m not sure if it’s a joke or if Jodi really thinks we can’t feed ourselves, but it’s damn good casserole, so who cares, right?”

Sam hauls his bag out towards his room, leaving Dean staring after him. Who cares?

Dean cares. He can cook. A brief thought of inviting Jodi and the girls up to try his food is snuffed out when he turns to find Cas standing in the doorway, looking spaced out.

“Hey,” Dean says. “What’s dragged you away from that thing? You come to tell me about a meteor?”

Cas blinks, and locks onto Dean. It only makes it more obvious he wasn’t really seeing Dean before.

“You need to come and see this,” Cas says.

Biting back any other comments, Dean follows Cas back to the telescope, and watches as the guy kneels again to look through it. He’s just about to ask what the point of this is when Cas sits back on his heels and gestures Dean closer. 

“Here. Look,” Cas says, and pulls on Dean’s elbow, bringing him to his knees. “Look.”

Dean catches his breath, startled again at how strong Cas is. Cas isn’t looking at him. Cas is staring at the scope, his hair curling at the nape of his neck and his entire face set in concentration. 

“Dean, stop looking at me and look through the sight,” Cas says, and guides Dean by his elbow.

Giving in, Dean moves forward on his knees and sets his eye to the telescope’s sight. He’s not sure why a close-up of concrete-

“Fuck.”

Jolting back, Dean finds himself pressed up against Cas, who catches him. With his back right against Cas’ front, and one of Cas’ arms around his body, Dean tries to make sense of what he just saw. He doesn’t even tell Cas to let go. 

“What did I just see?” he asks, but Cas doesn’t answer. He just adjusts his grip, pushes Dean back upright and to the sight, and Dean looks through it again.

Right into Charlie’s face.

“Cas, that’s…”

He knows it comes out broken. Doesn’t care.

“Yes,” Cas says, quiet and solemn and something else, some thread of something warmer that Dean can’t quite read. “Who do you see?”

“Charlie,” Dean says, his throat working around her name. “I thought… Didn’t you see her? Isn’t that what you wanted me to see?”

He watches Charlie smile, sees her push a strand of hair behind her ears and turn to speak to someone Dean can’t make out. He feels Cas’ hand on his shoulder and doesn’t comment when it moves in a circle, soothing.

“I didn’t know who you’d see,” Cas says. 

At the layers in Cas’ voice, Dean manages to pull himself away long enough to turn his head, and find Cas right there, inches away, the blue of his eyes made richer by unshed tears.

“Who did you see, Cas?” Dean asks.

Cas’ gaze drops, and Dean fights the urge to set a finger under Cas’ chin and bring his head back up.

“At first it was Hannah,” he says. 

“At first?”

Cas nods, a tiny thing that’s barely more than a movement of his chin. Dean leaves space for Cas to say who else he saw, but all he gets is silence. 

“Right. Okay, then. So, do we know what this is? Some kind of wish-fulfillment, a memory thing? What?”

Still not meeting Dean’s eyes, Cas answers with a frown.

“I’m not sure, but I think it might be showing us into different realms.”

“Heaven?”

Charlie’s in Heaven. She must be. Or…or the Veil. Dean’s tried hard not to work through the conclusions of that one. If Charlie’s in the Veil, then maybe she’s now in Amara. Since settling things with God and his sister, and dealing with the British chapter of the Men of Letters, Dean’s had a bit too much time to think on that one. He has so many things he regrets not asking Chuck to fix. 

Cas shakes his head.

“Not Heaven?”

Shit. Kevin was pissed at being stuck in the Veil, but in the few times Dean and Sam saw him since his death, Kevin never really filled them in on all the details. 

“No. I think…Dean, I don’t think this shows us realms we can reach. Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, the Veil, are all a part of this world, when you think about it.”

“But you saw Hannah.”

“Hannah wouldn’t be in Heaven. We’ve never known where angels go when they die. At least, I don’t remember knowing.”

“What are you saying, Cas?”

“From what I’ve seen,” Cas says, “it’s part of the realms of the Fae.”

“Fairy land?” Dean asks. “Cas, we can reach that. Charlie’s been there. Hell, I’ve been there.” He tries to tamp down on the rising excitement, but it’s hard, like trying to stop a spring bubbling up through rock. “If Charlie’ back-”

“No,” Cas says. “No, from what you’ve told me the last key to Oz was destroyed, and that’s one of the closer realms. I’m rusty on the details. Maybe I never knew a lot. Maybe Naomi wiped them. I don’t know. And I don’t know if Hannah and the others are in the same place, but I do think they’re all in some of the deeper Fae realms. We have no way to reach that.”

“We used to think we couldn’t get into any of those other places. We can do this. We can go and get them,” Dean says.

Sam might need a day or two before diving into the next mission, but they can get started on research, they can-

“No, Dean,” Cas says. “These are deep into lands none of us have ever visited. I’m not sure even the Fae who’ve been to this world have travelled so far the other way. And finding a way in… Besides, they could have looked for a way to cross back to us, if it were possible. If they wanted to.”

“Okay, you listen to me properly, Castiel,” Dean says, and he does take hold of Cas’ chin, he sees the way Cas’ eyes widen as Dean guides the angel’s head around. “We’ve fixed the whole damn universe, playing family therapists to God and Amara. If our friends are still out there, stuck in some fairy dream-world, we can go and fetch them back. You hear me?”

“What if they don’t want me to save them?” Cas asks, and it comes out as a whisper.

And Dean banishes his instinctive answer more easily than he would have done a few months back. He doesn’t say they’ll drag them back anyway. He doesn’t say they’ll leave them without finding out, either.

“When we find them,” he says, “we’ll ask. But we gotta find them first.”

Sam insists on looking through the telescope himself when they go to find him, and Dean doesn’t even pretend not to see Sam tear up. He’s still got wet eyes himself. 

Turns out Sam doesn’t feel the need for any time off before they get started looking for a way to crack open the door to the lands of the Fae, and as they eat casserole over cracked and ancient books, Dean tentatively adds Charlie to the guest list for that meal he’s planning. 

It’s going to be a hell of a celebration meal.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know if you like it, people.


End file.
